RICK RIDGEWAY GOES TO THE EDGE
SUBJECT
Rick Ridgeway
OCCUPATION
Vice president, mountaineer
INTERVIEWER
Dan Fitzgerald
PHOTOGRAPHERS
Jeff Johnson and Joe Riis
LOCATION
Ventura, US
DATE
July 2018
ANTIDOTE TO
Living tame
UNEXPECTED
Taught himself to climb
Rick Ridgeway has been fortunate to experience enough wild places to be able to sense what the world was like prior to human existence. One of the modern age’s great mountaineers and explorers, he grew up in southern California and taught himself to climb with a book, ice pick and crampons. In 1978, along with three companions—one of whom was Rick’s inspiration to begin climbing as a teenager—he became the first American to summit K2, the world’s second highest peak, considered the toughest of the world’s high-altitude mountains to climb. He also completed the first direct coast-to-coast traverse of Borneo, and covered Tibet’s Changtang plateau on a route never before explored.
But what makes Rick so special is his ability to translate his experiences of the wild into everyday lessons for living more deeply and with a greater sense of connection to our environments and our past. He currently pours much of his energy and wisdom into his role as Patagonia’s Vice President of Public Engagement, where he represents the company’s core values—“build the best product, cause no unnecessary harm and use business to inspire solutions”—to external stakeholders. Much like a modern-day John Muir, Rick is also a natural writer and storyteller, having written for National Geographic and Harvard Business Review and authored six books, including Seven Summits, The Shadow of Kilimanjaro and Below Another Sky.
I’ve had the honour of spending time with Rick over the past 12 months, and on each occasion been in awe of him and his passion for life. Our conversation reinforced for me the energetic shifts that take place in each of us when we’re lucky enough to be present in wild landscapes. I was reminded of the sense of wonder we experience and the dilution of any separateness that just naturally happens when we unite our wild selves with the wild around us.
“If we lose the wildness of our planet, we will lose our souls and we’ll very probably lose the underpinnings of the support systems that our planet provides us to even keep our health and lives intact.”
As we each bear witness to the devastating harm caused by our species, I am encouraged by how Rick remains optimistic in the face of unprecedented destruction. Referencing one of the world’s foremost conservation biologists, George Schaller, his advice is to wake up in the morning, take a deep breath and then remind yourself that today, you’re not going to save the world. Today, you’re going to focus on saving one small, discrete, very clearly-defined part of it.
Please enjoy the wisdom of Rick Ridgeway.
DAN FITZGERALD: Should we dive right in? ’Cause I’d love to explore this love of nature you have, and your deep experience of mountain climbing and being in the wild and how that has influenced your philosophy towards life. And then also coming full circle to business and using business as a tool to protect these wild places. Maybe we can start with how you got into climbing mountains and how that has evolved over the course of your life.
RICK RIDGEWAY: Sure. My passion for climbing started when I was young teenager. I got in the mailbox a that described the first American edition that described our successful ascent of K2. And then to complete the circle, many years later I was filming another climb in Antarctica with Conrad Anker and Alex Lowe, the two greatest climbers of that era. In the late ’90s they were making the first big wall climb ever done in Antarctica. During the storm while we were waiting for the weather to improve, Conrad said, “You know Rick, there’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you. When I was about 12 years old I got my in the mail with a picture of you on the cover climbing K2 and I said, ‘I want to be that guy! That’s how I started.’” So there’s this great symmetry of mentors in climbing and I just was really fortunate to have some very good ones. And I’ve been blessed to do that for younger climbers now.
